Anupama S Iyer

Anupama is a graphic designer, illustrator and visual artist whose practice explores the visual languages embedded within both natural and built environments. Through observational drawing, photography, frottage and creative writing, she studies motifs, patterns, colours and textures found in her everyday surroundings. She is particularly passionate about art and craft traditions, and draws inspiration from her travels. These collected impressions become the starting point for works that reflect on the character and atmosphere of spaces, revealing how environments hold memory, history and cultural meaning.

Working across analogue and digital processes, Anupama experiments with diverse image-making techniques and narrative structures. Her practice embraces play — translating, assembling and disassembling visual elements to construct layered compositions. She explores a range of mediums including printmaking (linocut) on paper and textiles, ceramics and digital artworks and prints. Through this process, fragments of observation are transformed into culturally grounded narratives that connect place, period and people.

As a global citizen with roots in Southern India and a life shaped in the United Kingdom, Anupama is especially drawn to architectural ornamentation. She is interested in how decorative forms travel across time and geography, creating shared visual languages that can foster cross-cultural dialogue.

Alongside her artistic practice, Anupama is a graphic designer and illustrator, crafting bespoke brand identities, publications and marketing materials across arts and culture, nature conservation, education and children’s literature. She holds a Master’s degree in Visual Communication (Illustration) from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Gordon Peter Pickard Award, which enabled her to visually document and illustrate one of the iconic bazaars of Southern India. She currently lives and works from her home studio in Ealing, London.